Thursday, 1 July 2010

No more brother wars, please

I didn’t really want to be drawn into the leadership question, however, it seems the inevitable has happened, with adversaries of Nick Griffin raising the issue of the position of Deputy Leader in general, and referring to me in particular. As you know, the position carries absolutely no constitutional weight, and I feel it totally unfair and underhand, in a potential contest that involves solely the Leader of the Party, that some are seeking to confuse matters by bringing up the position of Deputy.

As many of you will know, the position of Deputy Leader of the British National Party was created as an ad hoc, purely practical operational measure by Nick Griffin in the middle of 2005. Nick was facing the prospect of being incarcerated for up to seven years, courtesy of a BBC/Searchlight plot, simply for telling the truth about Islam. The outcome of course, is history, but at the time the prospect of Nick being able to run the Party from HM Prison Armley seemed a little optimistic!

He therefore asked me to accept the position of Deputy Leader, a post created and always intended as a practical insurance against a State-sanctioned decapitation of our Party. I remember the following year, when Nick was retried when the authorities failed to get the ‘correct’ decision, that he handed me a note containing instructions while the jury was out. I never read all of it, but I can tell you that the first paragraphs contained instructions on how I was to handle his decision – if jailed - to go on hunger strike in order to try to force the Home Office and West Yorkshire Police to address the scandal of sexual predation of young English girls by Muslim men.

I think it was only as I grasped the full implications of those first paragraphs, that I really understood the magnitude of responsibility and commitment required by a genuine leader for the British National Party. I trust that my overjoyed response to Nick’s subsequent acquittal needed no explanation in such circumstances.

In 2009, I remember being on the stage at the Birmingham Indoor Arena as it was announced that a UKIP surge had cost me my position as a BNP MEP. To my right there was a television screen, which just as I was making my own speech informed everyone in the building that Nick had made the journey from potential Political Prisoner to become a BNP Member of the European Parliament.

Despite my personal disappointment in my own region, the victories for Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons marked an extraordinary Odyssey, against all the odds and a brutally hostile media and Establishment. Nick’s consequent appearance on Question Time further cemented his position of real political and personal recognition, and our party’s status as a beacon of hope to millions of ordinary Brits, and indeed people like us all over the world.

For all the constitutional irrelevance of the position of Deputy Leader, I like to think that my work in that post has contributed significantly towards the Party’s stability and advances on so many fronts. In dealing with the constant media and Establishment hostility, together with a succession of malicious legal attacks, over the last five years, I have not done a bad job. Further to this, in so doing, I hope and believe that I have won and retained the respect of the broad spectrum of the Party’s membership.

Having said that, and referring to the question at hand – namely the possibility of a leadership election – I firmly believe that the members must not be distracted by a sideshow. There is one issue, and one issue alone. That being who is suitable, and indeed capable, of leading and running the now most successful and powerful (why do you think the ConDem Coalition has just announced a cap on immigration?) nationalist movement this country has ever known.

You see, there is a danger here. This possibility for a legitimate contest is being exploited and abused to damage our beloved Movement as a whole. Whether it’s naivety, self-interest or something even worse, there is a real risk here of a dangerous escalation in what should only be a contest to choose the best man (or woman) for the job.

For that reason, I am going to put aside my own self-interest and status, with a view to helping to keep our Party unified. I will not allow myself, or the position in which I have served for five sometimes very trying years, to be exploited, abused or used to distract our people from the crucial choice that may have to be made.

Quite simply, the post of Deputy Leader has absolutely no constitutional standing, with it being a discretionary appointment being made or not by the duly elected Leader. For anyone to seek to make it an issue in a BNP Leadership election is therefore misguided at best, or insincere at worst.

As a result, and wishing to avoid a descent into personality-orientated factionalism, I am going to set an example. I have therefore decided to resign as Deputy Leader of this Party with immediate effect. My purpose in this decision is not only to take this distraction out of the election. Also, if I can endure self-imposed demotion for the greater good of this Party, then I have the moral right to ask that others at least exercise responsibility and restraint.

In particular, that means running a contest that sticks to the real issues, avoids red-herrings such as constitutionally irrelevant positions, and promotes would-be candidates on their own merits rather than setting nationalist brothers and sisters against each other by repeating enemy lies and black propaganda about the current leader and his team.

I know this is an unusual move, but I have not sacrificed twenty years of my life to see the opportunity and the Movement, that we have created together, thrown away by ill-discipline, reckless ambition and self-importance. It’s not about me. It never has been. It is, always has been, and always will be, about the future of our Nation and our People.

That in turn means that it’s all about the future of the only political machine with the public recognition, organisational sophistication, clout and experience to do the job. There is no time to deviate, no time to start afresh. It’s the British National Party and its victory, or national extermination and the eventual extinction of our kind.

You’ve taken the time to read this far - negotiating the few paragraphs that have seen me transformed from a high-profile player to ‘ordinary’ grass-roots nationalist - so I ask you for a few more moments of your time.

This Party would be nothing if it wasn’t for Nick Griffin’s total and unreserved commitment to the nationalist cause. It would be a sad, contained creature for contempt and ridicule, rather than the snarling, fighting, in-their-face beast that it is today – a constant rebuke and reminder to the Establishment of their treason, betrayal of our people, and the price they will one day have to pay for their crimes.

That is why they are trying so hard to destroy the British National Party – and the man who, more than any other, has made it what it is, and who remains, in my now humble but still extremely well informed opinion, the only man who can take us forward on the next stage of our epic, just and historic journey.

There is an old saying, “you never know what you’ve lost until it’s gone.” Don’t wake up one morning later this year to find that we’ve lost Nick Griffin and his team, and replaced them with a jostling, squabbling, unstable, untested and indecisive coalition. We elect a Leader to lead, that’s Nick’s job, and he’s the best man to do it.